TootSweet

C

God. I was eating, fucker.

People with at least certain types of NPD tend to use/manipulate/victimize people in ways that hurt, scare, and anger. People who have experience dealing with such NPD sufferers often have unresolved grudges which they project onto anyone with NPD. (Similarly, they tend to label NPD anyone who triggers their unresolved issues.)

In a perfect word, everyone would be emotionally mature enough not to be triggered or even injured in the first place by someone exhibiting manipulative/narcissistic behavior. But we don't live in a perfect world. Victims of emotional abuse have valid reason to hurt and be scared and angry. It's reasonable to say that they don't have valid reason to demonize people with NPD. But whether demonizing people with NPD is "valid" or not, it's understandable. At least as understandable as is any sort of projection.

So, this is a personal question, and definitely don't feel obligated to answer it, but if you "haven't abused or manipulated anyone ever", can I ask if you've gotten any verification of this assertion from an impartial observer? For instance, has a therapist used a term like "covert NPD" to refer to you?

Also, being honest here and speaking personally, I have suffered abuse and manipulation of a distinctively narcissistic sort for a number of years. I don't feel like I harbor hatred toward the individual in question today. (Though I'd really rather not ever interact with them again.) But it definitely was a long process to reach the point where I could say that. And it's pretty certain that even if the individual to whom I refer had/has issues that lead them to abuse and manipulate me, I must admit that I similarly had preexisting issues on which they wouldn't have been able to prey had I not had such issues. (And, full disclosure, if this individual ever had an NPD diagnosis from anyone with more authority than my own armchair, I'm unaware of it.)

I've since run into and worked closely with at least one other individual who habitually acted in very narcissistic ways toward me and others and I was able to mostly view them with empathy and avoid being triggered to an extent that wouldn't have been possible had I not previously worked closely with the former individual I mentioned above. I can't say I'm thankful to the first one per se, but at very least I can admit that having interacted with them, in some ways I've become a stronger person. (Even if in others I've become weaker.)

Stahp

I'm planning to print in PLA. Aside from sanding, I've heard primer/filler and even wood filler can be used to help hide layer lines. Also, I'm planning to paint the result with something kindof patterned/blotchy to help obscure the layer lines.

I don't have stringent tolerances or anything, so I don't expect I'll need to build it up to account for material removed by sanding or anything. My ultimate goal is to make tiles for the backsplash over my stove. The back (bottom for printing orientation) needs to be roughly as flat as my wall. The front(/top), aside from the features, needs to be sufficiently flat and of consistent thickness as to not stand out to the eye from a couple of feet away. And they need to be square enough to tile nicely on the wall. Aside from that, if sanding makes my 2mm thick features into 1.9mm thick features, that's no real problem for my application.

You may have a point about the hard-to-reach corners. I'm hoping the spray primer/filler will help a lot with that.

Thanks for the reply!

So, it looks like Round Anything that you referred me to could do something like the kind of thing I'm looking for, but it does have a significant drawback. Namely that It looks like the polyRoundExtrude() requires a list of points and radii. All I have is an STL file that I can convert into an OpenSCAD 2d geometry with a projection(). To use polyRoundExtrude(), I'd basically have to rebuild the Talavera pattern from scratch using the Round Anything library. (Or maybe export to SVG and... write some custom code to convert that into an OpenSCAD syntax array? Still seems like a pain.)

(One aside. I'd like to have an elliptical rounded corner rather than a circular one, but the above issue notwithstanding, that could be taken care of pretty easily with a bit of scaling magic.)

With some searching and asking around elsewhere, I did find a bunch of other potential ways to accomplish something vaguely like I'm wanting:

• BOSL2 - Might offer a solution to the second issue above. But it would similarly require rebuilding from scratch using BOSL2's facilities rather than modifying from what I've already got. (Also, it's pretty complex.)
• roof() - It allows adding a chamfer. Only at a 45°, though. Definitely wouldn't give me what I want (at least not on its own, but more on that later.) Also, roof() is only available in versions of OpenSCAD more recent than the latest release of OpenSCAD. So I'd have to use a recent development version. Not a deal breaker, but it doesn't seem like it'll do quite what I want anyway.
• minkowski() - This one involves doing a linear_extrude(<a very small value>) and a minkowski() with a sphere or ellipsoid. I'd also need to subtract off a bulge on the underside, not that that would be any big deal in itself. The major downsides of this option are 1) it's imprecise and 2) it's really slow. Like really slow.

But! I think I've found a solution I'm happy with. It also has drawbacks, but they're drawbacks I'm more willing to live with than those from the above options.

Ultimately, I'm planning to 3d-print the result on an FFF printer. (A Creality Ender 3 Pro and/or Ender 3 V2 Neo specifically.) I'm probably going to use the thinnest available layer height, which in Cura is 0.12mm.

The reason I went into all of that is just to say that while I want it smooth, I don't actually need it any smoother than my printer can handle. If it's only smooth to a resolution of 0.12mm, that's fine.

So, the solution I came to is to construct the elliptical curve like a stepped pyramid, which layers 0.12mm thick. To make it elliptical, I just used the equation for a unit circle: y=sqrt(1-x^2). Here's the code for this relatively simple solution:

module pillow(height, delta) {
	for (i = [0:floor(height/delta)])
		linear_extrude(i*delta)
			let(
				x=i/floor(height/delta),
				c=(1-sqrt(1-x^2))*height
			)
				offset(delta=-c)
					children();
}

pillow(1.5, 0.12)
	hull()
		for (i=[-1:1])
			translate([i*15, 0])
				circle(d=10);

And the result looks like:

Drawbacks:

• This solution is a little slow. Nowhere near as slow as the minkowski() solution, but kinda slow.
• The stepping probably better be tailored to your specific planned layer height. Which means if you want to reprint with a different layer height, you're probably best off to start by making a change (a small change, but a change none the less) to the .scad file.

Just as one final point, while I haven't yet had occasion to mess with roof() to really know the details of how it works and what it can do, I think the solution I came up with could be adapted to use roof() to make a much smoother and less stepped look. (Only in a version of OpenSCAD that supports roof() of course.)

That's it. I figured I'd detail my solution in case it'd help anyone else.

Thanks again for your input!

Dead internet theory is a fantastic theory that holds that the majority of the social media content on the internet is created by bots. I personally like to think about an internet with only bots in it, communicating back and forth without human interaction. For example, creating a Tamagochi hive at home. This not only increases bot happiness, but also adds excitement! By the way, if you're interested in non-standard hobbies, I also recommend paying attention to https://chatgpt.com/.

Yeah, you've just described me.

I spend almost all of my time:

• Tracking in what specific way the test environment is borked this time so I can figure out what team to bitch at to fix their shit.
• Helping someone on my team figure out how to fix their local development environment or figure out how to make Spring do something that should be simple, but actually requires looking at the Spring source code to find some obscurely-named class or annotation or whatever.
• Maintaining the Jira board, doing sprint-related documentation (because the stakeholders are above looking at Jira, I guess?), running standups, plannings, retros, ~~reviews~~ (don't ask), having 1-on-1s with my team members.
• Answering random questions from business, QA, other engineering teams, etc.
• Forwarding meeting invites.
• Logging my time like it's 1999 and I'm an hourly-paid intern because my company still thinks the internet is a fad. (Exaggeration, but yeah.)
• Code review, though I definitely don't get to that as much as would be optimal. I very much need to neglect some of the less important things above more to do more code review.

The way I think of it, much of what I do is unnecessary busywork made necessary only by the dumb rules invented by C-level people. The rest of what I do that actually contributes to the team's success (I like the word "success" over "productivity", but my employer doesn't so much think in those terms) has, rather than an additive effect on velocity, a multiplicative effect. If I spend an hour helping someone else, it's probably going to save them well more than an hour of banging their heads against a wall.

So many folks in this thread saying they have to be high to tolerate their families. What's the point of even attending a holiday family get-together if you can't stand them? (Just get high at home with a couple of friends who also can't stand their families.)

I keep some cash in my pocket specifically in case I run across someone asking for money.

And then I live like a hermit, almost never going anywhere, so it's rare that I actually have occasion to give in that way, but you know.

Also, in my experience, it's not necessarily homeless people who need the money. I've seen people (claiming they're) close to losing their housing who are hoping to raise enough money panhandling to make their rent this month.

Of course, if you are struggling financially, it's definitely very reasonable to decline to give in that context. I suppose if anything feels "off" as well. (Though I wouldn't want to bias folks in the direction of thinking that there may be any reason to be more suspicious of people in need than others.) But over all, I do think it's something that can make a hugely, vitally positive change in someone's basic wellbeing.

R

Maybe Paramount Global should negotiate with the TNG cast (including Patrick Stewart) for rights to their likeness and voice (kinda like they did with James Earl Jones) before any more of them die.